


The Sky and its Circus

by asparagus_writes



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Rebellion Era - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: 5 + 1 Fic, 5 Times, 501st, Alternate Universe, Alternate ways Luke and Leia grow up together, Anakin Skywalker Doesn't Turn to the Dark Side, Carbonite Freezing (Star Wars), Clone Trooper Inhibitor Chips (Star Wars), Dad Anakin Skywalker, Gen, Imperial Inquisitors (Star Wars), Padme and Anakin as rebel spies, Rex and Luke and Leia, The Empire Sucks, background ghost crew, beware ye who are trying to read this in the middle of a zoom class, but not necessarily knowing that's who they are, gets angsty and then gets fluffy by the end!, me cramming every interesting star wars AU idea into one fic, meeting your former commanding officer's kids, rebellion dream team Rex and Ahsoka, rebellion era
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-10
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:55:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,931
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27480823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asparagus_writes/pseuds/asparagus_writes
Summary: Five ways Rex could have met Luke and Leia for the first time, and the one way it should have happened.
Relationships: CT-7567 | Rex & Ahsoka Tano, CT-7567 | Rex & Anakin Skywalker, Leia Organa & Luke Skywalker
Comments: 65
Kudos: 269





	1. Rode in on a beam of light

**Author's Note:**

> Title(s) from Eko by Coldplay. I've been wanting to name a fic after this song for many moons now :)

“This one, Ahsoka,” Rex pointed out to her from the darkened street, pausing in front of a house whose door had been knocked slightly askew off its hinges. This was the address their intel had indicated—where one of the Rebellion’s agents had activated their distress beacon. The lights inside the windows were off and there was no suggestion of any movement inside, but Rex kept his hand near his hip, where he could easily get at his concealed blaster, in case the Empire (or their aforementioned agent) had left them any violent surprises.

Ahsoka stepped up next to him and gently pushed the door open. It creaked to admit them and they stepped over the threshold together. Ahsoka pulled out a flashlight and shone it into the corners of what clearly had once served as the house’s living room. If they had been alone, she would have pulled out one of her lightsabers for illumination, but this was a residential street and the neighbors around here would no doubt already be suspicious. Couch cushions were strewn across the floor and various belongings littered the carpet: broken holoprojectors and datapads, shoes without mates, and some children’s toys. The bouncing harsh white light threw it all into eerie, sharp relief, and the silence and darkness settled like a cold cruel hand squeezing Rex’s heart.

“A family lived here?” Rex wondered aloud. He didn’t really expect any Rebellion spies to have wanted to bring kids into it. The Imperials must have sent Stormtroopers to arrest these people in their home—a sort of midnight raid—but why?

“Yeah…” Ahsoka answered, moving through the doorway and trailing her fingers delicately over a blaster burn mark on the wall. They entered a kitchen next, their boots crunching over pieces of broken plates on the floor, stepping around overturned chairs. The beam of Ahsoka’s light passed over a splatter of human blood on the counter. In another spot just to the left, there was a smear of it that looked like it was left by someone’s fingers grasping for purchase to hold themselves upright.

Rex stepped up to the spot and inspected it.

“Looks like we’re too late,” he said.

And they usually were, for this sort of thing. Ahsoka and Rex had just happened to be the two closest to the system, so they were the ones who had happened to respond, but neither of them had expected to be able to make much of a difference in whatever had happened here. The distress beacons were only meant to be used in specific dire circumstances, and they weren’t necessarily meant to protect their agents themselves so much as whatever information and connections they had managed to collect. People who signed up to join the rebellion typically understood the risks it posed and had made their peace with it. But children had lived here.

“Anywhere it looks likely they might have left us a data stick to take back to base?” Rex asked, determined to be thorough yet get out of this grim place as fast as they could. He looked toward Ahsoka, because she was good at unearthing hidey-holes like that. Sometimes the Force was inclined to lead her to where important things could be found.

She was standing still, an odd look on her face, the light pointed to a doorway that led to what looked like a mudroom. There was a load of laundry scattered across the floor, probably upended by the same ruthless search the Stormtroopers had subjected the rest of this place to.

“In there?”

Ahsoka didn’t answer him, just strode into the room, barely even looking to avoid getting tangled up in the fabric on the floor. Rex watched as he stepped: children’s socks and pajamas, a long leather glove without a match in sight, and a colorful crumpled woman’s headscarf. Something about it chaffed against something in the back of his mind uncomfortably, but he chalked it up to the presence of all the children’s items. What had the Empire done to them? Their parents would likely be tortured and killed soon if they hadn’t been already. What was the protocol for dealing with children of suspected Rebel agents? Rex hoped he would never have to find out.

Ahsoka crouched down in the corner next to the laundry machine’s slightly rusted metal casing. She still had a slack look on her face. She extended the flashlight behind her to Rex, clearly expecting him to hold it as she searched the room. It cast wild, sinister shadows on the walls as he accepted it from her. He aimed the beam where she was looking, at a panel in the wall that seemed to hide a kind of circuit breaker, with tubes and wires poking out from behind it that probably connected the house to water and electricity.

She reached out and swung the panel open. It made a loud screeching sound that seemed to echo through the empty adjacent rooms and Rex flinched, since it was probably already suspicious that their light was shining all over the place to anyone who might bother to pay any attention to this house.

Something in the shadows behind the panel shrank away from the light, but there wasn’t really anywhere that Rex’s light couldn’t reach in there, so his eyes found it quickly. Peering through the bits of dust that drifted through the shaft of light, stirred by Ahsoka opening the door, Rex got an answer to the uncomfortable question that had been running through his mind since they entered this place. His light reflected off of the tear-stained cheeks of two children, their small bodies wrapped desperately around each other, white-knuckled hands wrapped around the knees drawn up to their chests. The one on the left, brown-haired, with long messy tangled ponytails brushing over her shoulders pressed her face into the shoulder of her companion, a blond-haired boy who regarded them both with wide blue eyes.

Ahsoka reached tentative gentle fingers out towards them and Rex saw the boy’s blue eyes narrow in suspicion. It shouldn’t have been possible with how wedged in the corner they already were, but the two kids cowered back even further from Ahsoka and Rex. Ahsoka stopped her hand far from touching either of them, evidently not wanting to spook them any worse. There was pain written into the familiar planes of her face at the sight of them.

“Hello,” Ahsoka said softly, “I promise I want to help you.”

Neither child gave any response, just stared.

“We’re not from the Empire. I just want to make sure you’re safe from whoever might come looking. My name is Ashla,” she introduced herself with her favorite alias.

The head with the brown hair turned itself towards Ahsoka and two critical deep brown eyes greeted them.

“You’re lying,” the girl’s small voice accused. Rex could hear it waver. Ahsoka drew a sharp breath and flinched backwards. The kid was right of course—about her name, but surely not about her intentions. How could she have known that? Ahsoka reached a blind hand backwards to rest on the top of Rex’s boot while still maintaining her crouch on the balls of her feet to keep herself level with the children hiding in the wall. She tapped his foot urgently, like she had just realized something very important, and he wasn’t sure what she meant by it.

Ahsoka turned her head up towards Rex, and her facial markings looked stark against her skin.

“They’re sensitive, Rex, both of them,” she murmured urgently. And suddenly many things made sense—why whoever had been the guardians of these children got involved with the Rebellion, how the two of them could have kept themselves hidden from the Empire when they had strong-armed their way through the house, why Ahsoka had known where to find them, and why calling herself _Ashla_ wasn’t going to work. She didn’t need to specify _sensitive to what._

Ahsoka turned cautiously back to the children, blinking.

“You’re right, I’m sorry,” she said eventually, “my friends call me Ahsoka. I don’t like bad people to know that, but you don’t seem like bad people, do you?”

“There were bad people here,” the boy confessed in a small voice with a wobbling bottom lip, “soldiers from the Empire.”

“They’re gone now,” Rex assured them lowly, trying to make his voice sound less gruff and adjusting the angle of the light so that it wasn’t shining directly into their eyes anymore. He thought back to the blood in the kitchen and the destruction of the property in the other rooms. No wonder the kids were upset if they had had to listen to that and keep themselves silent and hidden while it happened.

“We’ll make sure they don’t come back. Do you know why they came in the first place?” Ahsoka prodded.

“They took Mom and Dad. They were mad at them,” the little girl said. Rex saw her hand tighten around where it was clutching her brother’s forearm.

“Your mom and dad must have been friends with some of our friends,” Ahsoka said gently, “and they let us know to come here, to make sure you were okay.”

Rex knelt down on the floor behind where Ahsoka was crouched, so the kids could see his face better. No use scaring them any more than they probably already were.

“Can you tell us your names?” Rex asked them.

“Luke.”

“Leia.”

“Those are pretty names,” Ahsoka said, holding out her hand to them again, “do you want to come out? We won’t hurt you, I promise.”

Luke was the first to move, unfolding his legs jerkily to come out of the space behind the panel. Rex saw Ahsoka’s shoulders slacken in relief when he got to his feet and Leia followed him. The two children stood just in front of the open panel, still keeping their distance from Rex and Ahsoka, neither taking her offered hand. They were young—short enough that they would probably only reach up to Rex’s hip if he was standing next to them at full height.

“Did your parents ever tell you what they wanted you to do if they had to go away?” Ahsoka asked, clearly trying not to upset Luke and Leia with any implication of what had happened their parents. Rex privately thought that the chances were not good that they would ever see them again. The Rebellion was becoming full of kids like that, though most of them were not quite this young.

“Dad said—” Luke glanced at Leia who nodded slightly at him.

“He said to hide until someone came to get us. Him or Mom or someone else who felt right. And to fight if anyone else tried to take us.”

“Someone who feels right?”

“Dad said you had to feel really nice in our heads. Like him,” Luke said. Rex wondered if that was really how the Force worked. Clearly their parents understood the kids were Force sensitive, but of course they probably had no idea what it actually meant. Then again, Rex didn’t really know either. He wanted to ask Ahsoka later if that advice would have worked if someone less sympathetic had come along instead.

Ahsoka waited, clearly wanting Luke to decide for himself whether she was trustworthy. She smiled carefully, tight-lipped in the way she did when she didn’t want her pointed canine teeth to show, and she tilted her head invitingly.

“Leia thinks you do, and she’s really good at telling that stuff,” Luke said, and Ahsoka’s shoulders slumped in relief, “and I think you feel nice too.”

Leia turned to reach back into the space in the wall they had been using to hide. She rummaged her hand around and something metallic clinked against something else. Rex barely suppressed the urge to tense at her unexpected movement. In fact, it wasn’t even so far-fetched that she would pull out a blaster, which was what his instincts had initially warned him.

“Then Mom and Dad said we should show you this next,” she whispered. Rex’s flashlight glinted sharply off the chrome surface of the cylindrical object she held out to them. The odd itch on his memory returned for a split second before Rex got a really good look at what her small hand was clutching like a lifeline. Ahsoka froze, recognizing the outline of it immediately. It wasn’t a blaster. She reached out a shaking hand to almost touch the weapon, like she could barely believe it was real.

The sole of her boot rasped over the floor as she shifted uneasily and then the only sound was their nervous breathing for an eternal second. _How_ —Rex thought— _how_ possibly _could that have ended up here_ —

“We’re going to get your parents back,” Ahsoka breathed into the silence, “I promise.”


	2. Stray dogs to welcome him, fights

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the one that the archive warnings apply to...

CT-7567 was a good soldier, and good soldiers followed orders. In the past few days, he had been following orders even better than most. He and his men had executed two Force-using traitors on their star destroyer as soon as the order had gone out, and then the new Emperor and head of the most powerful army in the galaxy had placed him in charge of rooting out and eliminating the rest of the Jedi traitors too. He had said something about 7567’s years of brave and valuable service, though those were nothing more than a distant memory that paled in comparison to his current mission.

The Commander pulled on his helmet as he and his squad of troops prepared to storm this apartment building. They had it on very good intelligence that one of the fancy senators who lived here was harboring a Jedi fugitive. A very powerful Jedi—one who would put up a fight, so the Emperor had sent more men along than CT-7567 thought strictly necessary. Their leader had implied that 7567 knew this traitor well, though he found that a bit impossible to believe, since no good soldier with years of brave and valuable service would ever become friends, or even acquaintances, with a traitor.

He scanned with his shrewd leader’s eyes over the readied lines of his squad’s helmets, taking in the odd blue markings that many of them bore. He reminded himself that, when they had a second in between all this hunting, he would order the men to get rid of the frivolous paint. The Commander wasn’t sure how any of it had gotten there, but he was sure that it was against regulation and it was a bad look for the Empire’s powerful army.

With a terse wave of his fingers, he sent the men storming up the stairway of the building and followed close behind them. CT-7567 had been given special orders to also rid the Senate of the traitor who lived here, and anyone else—Jedi, Separatist, or Rebel sympathizer—whom he might find with her. As he supervised his men breaking down the door that Senator so disobediently refused to answer for her Emperor’s valiant army, CT-7567 stared down the barrel of his blaster, ready to execute his orders.

They filed efficiently through the house, trodding on plush carpets, and passing elegant lines of furniture and sleek glass tabletops without a second look. Rex heard his men firing their blasters before he rounded the corner, and he knew they had found their Jedi by the sound of the familiar snap-hiss of one of their order’s infernal weapons.

“Go!” a man’s frantic voice echoed through the hallway, “Take them and run, Padmé!”

The voices of the Jedi traitors CT-7567 had dealt with over the past few days had always sounded panicked, scared, betrayed, but few had sounded this…desperate. 7567’s limbs froze up for a split second, his blaster not dropping from its readied position, as he had the sudden urge to obey the voice--to run away and never come back. But he overcame the odd sensation quickly and rounded the corner to see the owner of the voice in full view. He hastily ducked one of the blaster blots that was flying in his direction, bouncing off the harsh blue light of the man’s Jedi weapon. The traitor was standing in a doorway to what looked like a plush bedroom, and the Commander could see a woman hurrying around the room behind him, gathering up something in her arms. She matched the picture of the Senator in his briefing materials exactly and 7567 trained his weapon on her. His men were focused on trying to kill the Jedi, but they weren’t getting anywhere, so 7567 would complete their higher directive in the meantime. He was their leader, so it was his responsibility to keep all of the mission objectives in mind.

Everyone in this apartment was marked for death, and they deserved it because of their heinous actions against the Empire. Good soldiers followed orders, and this was his.

7567 fired his weapon on the woman, but it was caught against the Jedi’s blade, which flashed out quickly in front of the projectile and deflected it into an opposite wall. The Commander should have realized it sooner, but the Jedi had taken up a defensive position in the doorway, meant to protect the woman and whoever else was in the room behind him. Firing his weapon in the Jedi’s direction again, 7567 realized he had miscalculated—executing this Jedi needed to be done first before the rest of the mission could be completed.

“Rex?” the man’s desperate voice cut through the noise of the action again, full of betrayal, and his eyes were trained on the slit of 7567’s helmet. 7567 found himself listening to it, “Rex, please! Stop! Stand down! Why are you doing this?”

7567 felt like he should have been briefed on who this _Rex_ was. Was there another target in the apartment they should have been expecting? But it didn’t matter, because more of the Commander’s men were lining up in the hallway behind him, and the volume of blaster bolts being fired every second at the Jedi was reaching a critical mass. The man’s weapon was a barely discernible blur of light as it moved quickly to catch each shot fired at him, and 7567 felt a distant thrill of satisfaction as he watched the man shuffle backwards, into the narrow doorway, in order to give himself spit-seconds more time to anticipate each shot and catch it against his blade. But CT-7567 was becoming an expert on the weaknesses of Jedi, and the fastest way to get one of them to falter in blaster bolt deflection was to back them into a place where they couldn’t move their blade freely—a confined space just like a doorway.

Within seconds, sparks flew as the blade bit into the sides of the doorway, and a few more seconds after that, the Commander saw the Jedi’s body flinch as one shot, then another and another made contact. They’d gotten him, and even though the Jedi stumbled and managed to deflect a few more bolts away from the woman behind him, he slumped to the ground after some of 7567’s men put a few more rounds into him.

7567 refocused on the rest of the mission when the woman who had been his original target sobbed from her position in the room they had trapped her in, “ _Anakin!_ ”

It did something strange to 7567 for a moment, as if the raw pain contained in her ragged scream was cutting right into a specific spot on the side of his head. His fingers spasmed and he dropped his blaster numbly to the carpet. The strange sudden pain receded as he bent to pick up the weapon from where it had fallen, but surged back for a short moment as his eyes fell on the limp, gloved hand of the Jedi they had executed and the deactivated hilt of his lightsaber next to it.

But CT-7567 was a soldier with many brave and valuable years of service to his government, and he had been trained to push past pain in the midst of battle. His fingers closed again around the trigger of his DC-17 blaster and he straightened, focusing again on the Senator.

She knelt behind the bed in the center of the room, peering over the covers towards the hallway. There were tears on her face, and she had an arm braced straight out across the top of the mattress, clutching a blaster pistol. She was firing into the mass of soldiers that had gathered outside her door. Her other arm clutched a mass of blankets in the crook of her elbow. She was outnumbered and she looked like she knew it.

With a twitch of his fingers in the air, the Commander ordered the men gathered around him to move into the room, and they stepped over the Jedi’s body to do so. They began firing at the Senator and it didn’t take long until one of them managed to shoot her weapon out of her hand, causing her to shout in pain and surprise. Immediately, their target began to turn, reaching for another mass of blankets on the floor next to her and taking it into her arms like the other one. She lowered her head and put her back—her body—between what she was carrying and CT-7567’s advancing men.

They made quick work of the defenseless woman and she slumped over to the side once they had put a few rounds into her back. Without the sounds of discharging blasters filling the space, 7567 became aware of another sound, loud and grating, a sort of screaming, filling his helmet’s speakers. It was coming from over by the Senator’s body. He approached her and peered into the nests of blankets still trapped in her lifeless arms. There were two very small children wrapped there, red-faced and squalling. Their small lips formed round Os and their tiny fists waved angrily through the air. 7567 froze for a second, not having expected to find this at all. He cautiously held up a fist to stop his men in the doorway, but surely these infants could not be dangerous to them. He straightened, hands tight around his weapon, considering the two small humans he had found.

There was a tugging in his gut and a matching pain in his head, the same he had felt after so many of his missions lately, but he put it up to fading adrenaline and the buzz of yet another success, as he always did. CT-7567 brought up his weapon.

Their orders were to execute everyone they found in this apartment. Everyone. Good soldiers followed orders and CT-7567 was a good soldier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry.


	3. Corrugate Cathedrals

Carbon freezing was worse the second time, or at least that was what Rex was going to tell anyone who asked him. The first time he had been freed from it and only been uncomfortable in a fleeting way, able to easily pick out his Generals’ and brothers’ voices and shapes around him almost immediately. Maybe it had been the armor that had protected him the first time—he wasn’t wearing it right now, that much he could tell.

This time, he felt the freezing fading patchily from his body and was suddenly hot and cold all over. He couldn’t stop himself from slumping forward out of the carbon freezing frame, and though he was distressingly without his sight or most of his hearing, he still felt the impact of his face with the ground. Rex wanted to get his hands under him so he could at least stop his nose from being smushed against the dusty floor, but his body didn’t seem to want to obey his wishes. The muscles up and down his arms were sore and the most he could do was twitch his hands clumsily against the ground. Then there were hands on his shoulders, pushing him upright and leaning him against some kind of wall. They were small and cool: a woman’s hands.

Rex shivered and felt a cold sweat dripping down his back and tried to make sense of what was happening. The voice of the woman who must have been the one helping him reached him as if he was underwater.

“Hey, hey,” she was saying, faintly, and it took him several seconds to make sense of the words, “it’s alright, we’ve got you.”

Rex took a deep breath and tried to blink the murky clouds out of his eyes, so he could see whoever his savior was where he could hear her off to his left. All he could see was shifting lights in the background of his greyed vision, like he had his eyes closed, which he could feel he didn’t. What had happened?

The kind woman, whoever she was, said in her soothing voice, like she had anticipated the question or plucked it right from his mind, “You’ve been carbon frozen for a while. The carbon sickness will fade in a little bit. Just rest for now.” Her gentle hands fluttered nervously over his arms and Rex managed to make his neck cooperate with him so he could turn his face towards her voice.

“Who’re you?” Rex managed to stammer.

“My name is Leia,” she answered him, which didn’t mean anything to Rex, “stay put for a second okay? I’m going to help some of your brothers and then I’ll be back.”

Before Rex could even nod weakly, he could tell she was moving away from him. He leaned his head back against the wall and tried to get a sense of his surroundings. There were more voices drifting through the air around him. Some of them sounded like his brothers, but most of them were unfamiliar, though perhaps tainted with the distinctive tones of military command structure he had grown up with.

He tried to think back to the last thing he remembered: being forced to step into a carbon freezing chamber, at blaster point, but why? He had been—he had been on Coruscant, in the GAR barracks where he had found out the rest of his battalion, the half that had gone with General Skywalker to rescue the Chancellor from Grievous, had been stationed there after—

Oh _stars_ , _Order 66_ , the _chips_. What had happened to the brothers he hadn’t managed to remove them from before he got caught? What about Ahsoka? He had told her she couldn’t come with him. It would have been too dangerous for her. Was she alright? How long had it been? Who had found them and freed them? Rex tried again to get his weak, uncoordinated body to cooperate with him, to stand up, but he couldn’t. He needed to tell someone, to get help--

“Luke!” he heard the same woman’s voice from earlier calling across the clamor. A moment later he felt the vibrations in the floor of someone walking quickly past him and then a man’s voice.

“What did you find, Leia?”

Other sounds from around him swallowed up the first part of her answer, but Rex managed to catch some of it.

“—his tattoo. Five Zero One—”

They must have been looking at another one of Rex’s brothers that had been frozen with him. A lot of them had gotten five-oh-first tattoos over the years, as a matter of pride. Shouldn’t it have been obvious who they were? Some of his brothers, he remembered now, had still been wearing the distinctive blue armor. Most citizens of the Republic who watched the holonet at least occasionally would have recognized what that number and the colors meant in combination, especially on a clone. Their battalion had always gotten more publicity than some of the others.

“Vader’s Fist,” he heard the man say, a concerned note in his voice that Rex couldn’t quite place, but it seemed almost familiar. Rex had heard that accent before—

The background noise of his brothers coming out of the carbon freezing overwhelmed Rex’s senses for another few moments as he tried in vain to blink the blurriness out of his vision. Hadn’t he read once about carbon sickness, before the Citadel mission, that it got worse as the time spent frozen increased? How long had it been?

Then Rex’s ears, which seemed to slowly be getting better at making sense of the voices around him, picked out something strange,

“—ommander Skywalker,” called across the room by someone who was clearly not a clone. _Commander?_

“Genr’l Skywalker?” Rex muttered, confused. Nevermind that Rex had heard brothers talking about the fact that he’d been killed in the order, if the General was really here it probably wasn’t safe for him. Rex couldn’t remember if all the brothers he had been with had had their inhibitor chips removed yet. He needed to make sure—

Footsteps stopped in front of him, and then Rex stilled as he heard the man’s voice from earlier call from above him,

“Just a minute, I’ll be right there.”

Then Rex could make out a rustling of clothing and a creak of leather boots next to him as the man must have been crouching down next to Rex. A dark patch of shadow fell across Rex’s impaired vision.

“What did you say, trooper?” the man asked smoothly, settling his right hand on top of Rex’s. Rex focused on the texture of the man’s skin on his, but something felt almost fake about it—it was too cold, like—

“General Skywalker?”

The hand retreated from his and he heard the man draw a sharp breath.

“No, I—No, you must be thinking of someone else. I’m just Luke,” the man, whom Rex could have sworn someone had called Skywalker, said. Rex could tell from his voice that he must be telling the truth—it wasn’t quite low or monotone enough, though there was still something that Rex could almost recognize in the accent.

“He’s not here. It’s been a long time,” Luke explained further, and there was something sad and almost wistful in his voice that Rex wished he could understand.

“Don’t worry, Commander,” Luke reassured, his voice growing fainter like he was standing up again, “we’ll make sure we get you and your men to safety. I’ll explain everything once you’re all feeling better.”

Rex heard the man’s retreating footsteps and let his head thunk back onto the wall he was propped against. He wasn’t so sure he would like the promised explanation one bit, but damn if he didn’t want to hear it something fierce right now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't ask me why Rex and the others were carbon frozen instead of just killed when they were discovered to have taken their chips out... The only reason is that I wanted this encounter with Luke and Leia to happen later!
> 
> This the first of several AUs in which Darth Vader exists, but hopefully you prefer it to the last! Not so much unbearable pain this time as...bittersweetness maybe.


	4. The sight of the pilgrims going nowhere

Rex and Ahsoka were just finishing giving a briefing on the bridge of Commander Sato’s flagship when Ezra and Kanan walked through the automatic doors, discussing animatedly how their latest mission had gone.

“I’m telling you, they must have been my age,” Ezra was saying, “but how could they have been so good? They’re better than you even!”

“Hey,” Kanan insisted, “we managed to survive, so they weren’t _that_ much better than us. I’d say we did pretty well.”

“What happened?” Ahsoka asked from across the room, looking up from the star chart she had been studying. They really needed to find a suitable spot to establish another base, but nowhere seemed to have everything they needed.

“We ran into some new, really nasty inquisitors this morning,” Ezra explained.

“Nasty?” Ahsoka said.

“They were like, crazy good with their stupid spinny lightsabers,” Ezra groaned, showing off a section of his hair that had clearly been cut short by a lightsaber, “look, one of them almost took off my head!”

“And they were kids,” Kanan cut in, more seriously. Ahsoka drummed her fingers against the edge of the holoprojector table she was standing at.

“The inquisitor training program must be progressing, then,” she worried.

“Kanan and I will just have to train harder, so we make sure it doesn’t _progress_ any _further_ the next time we meet them,” Ezra threatened.

“What person my age would even want to join the Empire anyways? The academy is so boring,” he groused, recalling the undercover mission he’d undertaken with much complaining recently. Ezra was a good kid, and to be honest he was growing on Rex, but even Ahsoka at his age had been less whiny, despite how apt General Skywalker’s nickname for her had been at first. They just didn’t make them like Jedi Padawans anymore, that much was clear.

“I doubt they _chose_ to become inquisitors,” Ahsoka snapped, voicing the grim conclusion of Rex’s line of thinking, and Ezra flinched back, suitably chastened.

“Let’s spar later and you can show me how they fought,” she said more indulgently, brushing past all of them to leave the room. She looked deeply troubled, and Rex wasn’t sure whether she would want company, so he didn’t follow her. More and more of Ahsoka’s job lately seemed to be tied up in protecting Force-sensitive children from being taken by the Empire, and Rex thought she must have seen this latest development as a failure.

“I just hope I don’t have to be there the next time you run into them,” Rex tried to joke to diffuse the tension in the room that she left behind, “I’ve meet enough darksiders to last me several lifetimes.”

No such luck, because Rex, Ahsoka, and the Ghost crew were on a supply run mission a few weeks later when two figures, dressed head to toe in black showed up to block their path. They were just in the process of going back to the Ghost after some sabotage of an Imperial shipment, hauling several valuable shield generators in tow, when the kids showed up.

Ezra was right that they did look his age—the girl seemed a little shorter than Ezra and the boy a little taller. Even without seeing their faces, hidden behind masks as they were, the slightly gangly quality to their limbs marked them as human teenagers.

“I believe those belong to us,” the girl sneered from behind her shiny black mask, gesturing to the shield generators Sabine and Zeb were pulling along, “we’d like them back, please.”

“And perhaps your heads too, Jedi, to bring back to our father,” the boy snarled.

Their father? Rex admittedly did not run intelligence on the inquisitor program—that was Ahsoka—but in his limited knowledge that was generally _not_ how it worked. Her working theory was that they had been former Jedi Initiates and Padawans who hadn’t been able to escape the clutches of the Empire like she and Kanan had, and who had been twisted to the dark side of the Force by torture or some other kind of brainwashing. Rex had thought that maybe some of her earlier disquietude had been Ahsoka wondering if she had known these two—siblings, he guessed?—growing up at the Jedi Temple. But if they really were Ezra’s age, they would have been too young for even that.

“Not a chance,” Ezra shot back, pulling out his lightsaber and igniting it. The two inquisitors responded in kind with their red blades, each only igniting one side of what Rex guessed were the typical double-bladed inquisitor ‘sabers, and Ahsoka and Kanan stepped forward and followed suit. Rex tried to edge closer to the other non-Jedi members of their crew, hopefully to arrange a swift exit while the inquisitors were distracted.

The boy inquisitor paced back and forth and flipped the hilt of his blade over the top of his hand menacingly, in a way Rex recognized vividly from watching General Skywalker fight. It was a kind of nervous tic that Skywalker had once explained to Ahsoka built up power in a waiting blade and worked to intimidate an opponent. Rex had always thought it spoke of an intimate knowledge of how to use the weapon with maximum aggressiveness and efficiency. He jerked his head at Sabine and Zeb tightly, indicating that they should go down the branch of the hallway to his left and take the back way to where Chopper waited with the Ghost. They started moving towards him to obey and that’s when the two inquisitors rushed forward as one to strike. Ahsoka and Kanan met their flashing blades, and Ezra quickly stepped up to help his master with handling the girl.

Rex watched as he let the rest of the team head down the hallway before he did, and could immediately tell from the first few strikes and parries that these inquisitors were a cut above the ones they had encountered before, though it looked like at least Ahsoka would be able to hold her own against them. Every clone soldier who had ever served with the 501st knew a competent lightsaber duelist when they saw one.

Then, he followed the shield generators and their escorts back to the ship, trusting in his three Jedi that they would still be there when they returned to this platform for a pickup. Then they would jump to hyperspace like bats out of hell with their loot before the Empire’s ships could scramble and shoot them down—at least that was how it usually went.

When Hera piloted the Ghost back to the platform where they had first met the inquisitors, it turned out Rex had been right and Ahsoka, Ezra, and Kanan were still holding their own. Rex grasped the handle on the edge of the Ghost’s cargo hold and leaned out into the wind whipping past the open bay doors, ready to haul his teammates onto the ship and away from the two dangerous young inquisitors.

The fight came into view just in time for Rex to see Kanan score a slashing hit across the left bicep of the girl inquisitor he was fighting. She cried out and stumbled back out of the range of his blade, clutching her arm.

Ahsoka’s opponent’s head snapped to look over at his injured sister, and Rex thought he heard him yell, “Leah!” with an edge of panic. Maybe that was his sister’s name, or something like it. Rex then watched as Ahsoka took the opening of his distraction to give her opponent a spinning kick across the side of his head. He fell backwards and his mask clattered off his face onto the ground.

“Let’s go!” Rex yelled over the roar of the Ghost’s engines, since he could already hear the distinctive scream of TIE fighters approaching them. There might not be enough time for them to finish either of the inquisitors off without being caught themselves.

Ezra and Kanan turned immediately and made the Force-assisted jump to the Ghost’s waiting hull. After Rex grasped Ezra’s forearm to haul him bodily onto the ship, he turned back towards the platform, where Ahsoka was still standing over the twitching body of the male inquisitor.

“Ahsoka!”

She turned her face up towards Rex, and even at this distance he could see the doubt in her expression. It wouldn’t have been like her to kill the boy right now, defenseless as he was, even though Rex could see it would have been easy for her to do. All she would have to do was swing her long white blade across his neck—she could have done it without looking, in an instant and probably painlessly too. If Rex had been in her position, he might have.

Her montrals turned back towards the boy one more time, and the bright lights from the Ghost’s cockpit cast her shadow over his prone body. But then Ahsoka was taking a running leap onto the ship next to Rex. He called up to Hera that they were all aboard and the ship banked hard to the left, no doubt to avoid the incoming fighters. The ramp began to close rapidly, and Rex had to haul Ahsoka by the upper arm out of its way so she wouldn’t be crushed by the hydraulics.

She was breathing heavily from the fight and staring distantly at a point on the ladder that led to the cockpit.

“Are you alright?” he asked lowly.

She nodded absently and asked without meeting his eyes, “Did you get a look at his face?”

“No,” Rex told her truthfully. Ahsoka’s eyes narrowed and she snapped her lightsabers back onto her belt so she could worry her thumb across her lower lip.

“He looked familiar—” she said jerkily, still sounding uncertain, “I think I’ve seen him before, but I don’t remember—”

“There’s nothing you could have done to help him,” Rex assured her, “maybe you’ll even meet them again, and you can talk them down, or figure it out.”

Ahsoka tilted her head to the side, still looking disturbed, and it was making Rex grow increasingly concerned. She didn’t have any visible lightsaber injuries on her, but he glanced her over again just to make sure.

“The way he fought—” she said distantly, her mind clearly running at a million parsecs a second, “ _Djem So.”_ Then she confessed what was really troubling her, and Rex had glimpsed it too,

“He fought just like Anakin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's a reason he fights like Anakin. And Darth Vader fights like Anakin too. But that might be too much for Ahsoka to handle, so nobody tell her. Funnily enough, Luke goes back to his father after this and tells him that the togruta lady he and Leia just fought ALSO fights like him. Weird. Anakin's got some popular 'saber technique in this universe.
> 
> So that was my first small foray into writing a few members of the Ghost crew! I hope this lines up reasonably well with the plot of Rebels, but I didn't remember enough about the timing of the episodes to be sure. It's an AU anyways, so I guess it can be excused. See ya later!


	5. A dream in the distance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one is canon compliant! I felt like there needed to be at least one that could fit.

Rex was really getting tired of all the super-weapons that kept turning up for him and his friends to thwart. First it was the Malevolence, then the defoliator on Maridun, then that weird crystal that Generals Kenobi and Skywalker had destroyed on Utapau, then the first death star. And now the Empire had the audacity to make a _second_ death star. Rex was getting too old for this.

But as of late, the Rebellion had really been picking up steam, so Rex was willing to sit in however many briefings about the forest moon of Endor he had to if it meant that they were close to getting rid of the Empire. He only wished that some of his Jedi could have been around to see it.

Rex found a seat near the back of the briefing room, taking in the familiar faces of the Alliance command, including Generals Solo and Organa, who looked like she was already dressed for a field mission. It occasionally felt strange for him to hear about the big shot officers in this war more than he actually worked with them, but then again this wasn’t really _Rex’s_ war. What he was really hoping for was to finally see Luke Skywalker for himself, or even fight in a battle with him—Rex wasn’t sure if he was a still a Commander or another General Skywalker by this point. Sure, no one could ever replace Rex’s General Skywalker, but the kid had made quite a name for himself after the first death star and some Jedi escapades Rex had heard some mutterings about.

After so many years with the Rebellion, Rex was friends with many different agents and had heard all about their theories on who Luke Skywalker was. Some insisted that he and Anakin Skywalker were somehow biologically related. Others speculated that they simply coincidentally happened to share a last name—the buzz was that this Skywalker was also from Tatooine, so maybe it was a relatively common name there. Still more spun theories that Luke Skywalker wasn’t the guy’s actual name, but he had decided to take it on in order to carry on the noble Jedi spirit of Rex’s late General. Rex wasn’t sure which he would have preferred, but he did know that he was impatient to meet the kid.

He forced himself to pay attention to Mothma’s and Ackbar’s briefings, but there wasn’t much new information contained in them. The rumors that they would be going after the Emperor himself during this battle had been spreading for the past few hours. The leadership was sounding off, confirming their participation in various parts of the mission, and Rex found himself glad to be included in the ranks of General Solo’s team. Talk about a familiar command style—the arrogance and brash sarcasm dripping from the man’s voice when he wished Calrissian luck with the fighter attack took Rex right back.

As the volunteers stepped up to crew the shuttle, a murmur spread through the room, and Rex looked over just in time to see a sandy-haired man tell Solo and Organa that he was with them. So _that_ must have been Luke Skywalker. He was dressed in dark colors, almost like those Rex’s Skywalker had used to favor, but the clothes didn’t really cut a similar silhouette to any other conventional Jedi robes Rex had ever encountered. He bounded down the steps of the room with a kind of earnest confidence and friendly air that did really scream Skywalker to Rex’s trained senses.

Rex hadn’t really bought into the whole “related” theory, but the passing physical resemblance was there. Or, maybe it was just Rex wanting to see the similarities in mannerism between the two Skywalkers that made them appear. Not for the first time, Rex acutely wished that Ahsoka was still around, for he was sure she would have had some interesting opinions about all of this. Then again, if Ahsoka were still around, they might not have even needed to worry about a second death star—maybe the Emperor would already be dead by now.

Rex hoped he didn’t seem too nosy to anyone else in the room, but he watched Solo, Organa and Skywalker greet each other. Leia asked Luke a question after they embraced, but he brushed it off, though not before Rex noticed him casting her a meaningful look. He knew that the gossip on base was that Organa and Solo had feelings for each other, but Rex wondered if there wasn’t something there between Skywalker and Organa too. Force knew that Rex was probably the one person left alive in the galaxy who knew about the Skywalker men’s attraction to feisty, brunette, female politicians.

It was something to watch, at least. More evidence for some theories, in any case.

The three seemed to get along really well with each other, all smiles and warm embraces and inside jokes, and their closeness made Rex slightly jealous. And also eager to serve with perhaps another version of “The Team” that he had enjoyed working with so much during the Clone Wars. Any seasoned soldier knew that serving under commanding officers who knew each other and at least enjoyed each other’s company upped the chances of success for their missions dramatically. Perhaps that was why the Empire kept struggling to rid themselves of the Rebel menace—Rex couldn’t imagine any Imperial military officers actually experiencing the normal sentient emotion of camaraderie.

A few more minutes of observation, and Rex was feeling ready to follow these young people into whatever awaited them on Endor’s moon. At least, he was until he made to rise from his seat and his knees creaked under him; then, he was once again given cause to curse the Kaminoan cloners’ accelerated aging formula.

Oh well.

If this went as well as he had a feeling it might, maybe he could finally resolve himself to retiring after this. One last hurrah like the good old days, and then his work would be done and he could leave the galaxy in the capable hands of Organa, Skywalker and Solo.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I basically wrote this just to make the joke about the Luke/Leia romance thing. Cue the Han Solo kill bill siren video lol. Also I had fun with the old man Rex jokes. Otherwise not much happened plotwise in this one.
> 
> Excited for you all to read "the one way it should have happened" tomorrow!


	6. And countless the stars

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the good, wholesome one, folks!

The part that Rex probably liked least about his promotion to Commander was the fact that he was expected to report to the Jedi Council now. Of course, it wasn’t like he had never interacted with them before, but he had always been content to let Generals Skywalker and Kenobi deal with most of those internal politics. And now, with Ahsoka standing next to him, helping to give the report on what had happened on Mandalore, Rex was happy that the war was pretty much over and they wouldn’t be expected to do much of this again. It was always awkward trying to insert yourself in the middle of Jedi business and maintain a sufficient degree of professionalism.

The empty chair in the circle, too, was disconcerting, since Rex knew that General Skywalker was supposed to be the one to be filling it. Rex hadn’t actually had the chance to talk to him since returning to Coruscant, but of course he had heard the rumors, which seemed to be turning out to be mostly true. That General Skywalker had found convincing evidence that the Chancellor was a traitor to the Republic, orchestrating both sides of the war and planning a galactic grab for power, and a Sith on top of all of it to boot. That General Skywalker had killed him on the spot. Whisperings about it were spreading through the GAR barracks like wildfire, and every brother he’d talked to expected Rex to have some kind of inside information on it, which he absolutely did not.

Having spent years as the man’s second in command, Rex didn’t find it too far-fetched that General Skywalker would simply skip attending a meeting of the Jedi Council, on which he now had a seat, given the history of distrust and abrasiveness between the two parties. But the fact that Ahsoka was here to finally give her report on Maul and Mandalore had made Rex expect to see Skywalker there. He was now wondering if the man wasn’t somehow on the outs with the Council—overhearing some holo-conversations on Mandalore had made it seem like there was maybe something fraught going on there, though that could have been the whole Chancellor-as-a-Sith thing.

Ahsoka had just finished giving her report of how they had left the politics of Mandalore, which was a follow up to Rex’s report on troop numbers and casualties and peacekeeping forces left behind in Sundari as temporary insurance. General Kenobi assured them that Maul was being held in a very secure part of the Jedi Temple, under strict guard, and congratulated Ahsoka on her important and skillful work in capturing him. The tone of the meeting seemed to be wrapping up, but Rex could see how Ahsoka’s eyes kept sliding to the empty chair in the circle. It didn’t surprise him much when she interrupted near the end to ask,

“Masters, I thought that Master Skywalker might be here today?”

Rex saw General Kenobi exchange a sideways glance with General Yoda, who let out a croaking amused sound, the kind that Rex always found so unsettling coming from him.

“A subject of some debate, your former Master’s position on this council has become,” Yoda said.

“Anakin has been,” General Kenobi cut in, “somewhat busy the last few days, but I’m sure he’ll want to speak with you, Ahsoka. I’ll make sure to take you to see him after we’re done here.”

Ahsoka nodded cautiously, and said,

“I had hoped—” she shifted her weight, and Rex wished it would have been acceptable in this setting for him to rest a supportive hand on her shoulder, “I had hoped that the council might let me retake my place as his student. My place in the order. Again.”

“Discuss this with Master Skywalker, you should,” General Yoda responded, which was neither an acceptance nor a rejection of her request. Rex saw General Windu slip a hand over his mouth and raise his eyebrows, looking almost amused. Rex wished he was wearing his helmet right now so he could narrow his eyes in a glare at the man and go unobserved. He wasn’t sure whether the reaction was some kind of derision towards Ahsoka or General Skywalker, but he wasn’t happy with either of those two possibilities.

“Thank you, Commander, Ahsoka,” General Kenobi said, “I’ll be with you in a second,” a clear dismissal for the moment. Rex watched Ahsoka begin a reflexive bow towards the assembled Jedi Masters before stopping herself halfway and turning to leave the room. He followed her, keeping his eyes trained respectfully on the floor and not on any of the Council members.

Once they were outside of the doors to the chamber, Ahsoka let out a sharp breath.

“That was…” she hesitated, “… weird.”

Rex agreed with her there. At least it was over.

“Nobody’s said anything to you about Anakin?” Ahsoka asked him. He shook his head. She frowned and looked back at the closed chamber doors they had just come from.

Soon enough, General Kenobi was walking up to them and shepherding the three of them towards the Temple hangar, where they all loaded into a speeder, and the General steered them out into Coruscant traffic.

“I’m sorry we had to rather—” Kenobi searched for a delicate term, “—talk around the subject of Anakin in there,” he apologized, “It’s just that Anakin has recently managed to thoroughly scandalize many of the Masters on the Council.”

Rex saw Ahsoka raise her eyebrow markings out of the corner of his eye. He thought he was beginning to understand what this might be about, and truthfully, he was relieved he might not be expected to keep this particular secret much longer.

“And what about you?” Ahsoka asked, “are _you_ scandalized?”

Kenobi laughed. “No. Barely even surprised,” he said frankly, and Rex was heartened by seeing General Kenobi so lighthearted after the past few months of the war had been so hard on all of them. “What have you heard?” Kenobi asked Ahsoka.

“Well—” she started, “he did separate the Chancellor of the Republic’s head from his body in his own office—”

“Oh.” Kenobi shrugged, grinned, and changed lanes. “Yes, I suppose there’s that too.”

“That _too_?”

Rex looked up at their surroundings and realized where exactly they were on Coruscant. This might be a good moment to point it out.

“We’re going to Senator Amidala’s apartments, aren’t we?” Rex said bluntly. Ahsoka straightened in her seat, and General Kenobi glanced over at Rex.

“Indeed,” he said, “I guess I shouldn’t want to know exactly how long you’ve known about all of this.”

“No, sir,” Rex answered, and they left it at that.

When Kenobi landed the speeder on the Senator’s verandah, her gold-plated, frazzled-seeming protocol droid was the first out to greet them, but Amidala herself soon followed. She was wearing a long, airy, billowing dress and her curly hair was pulled away from her face somewhat haphazardly. Rex didn’t think he had ever seen her less put together, and it was very strange to him, but of course she looked beautiful as always.

“Oh, Obi Wan,” she greeted gaily, leaning in to give him a sisterly kiss on the cheek, “and Ahsoka and Rex! It’s so good to see you.” She opened her arms to Ahsoka, and Ahsoka returned the embrace after a moment of hesitation. Rex saw Ahsoka’s face scrunch in brief confusion when they first made contact, but then she closed her eyes and melted into the hug, seeming content to let go of whatever had initially puzzled her. Luckily for Rex, Amidala did not try to hug him too, just reached out to clasp him on the arm in a friendly way, which he was glad to accept with a smile and a nod.

“You three have come at the perfect time,” the senator gushed, “Anakin is being downright adorable in the other room,”

Adorable? Rex was beginning to doubt that he actually knew the full extent of what was going on here.

“Don’t worry, Obi,” she was saying as she turned to lead them away from the verandah, “I’ve already had Artoo take plenty of holos for later.” She turned back to look at them, winking and holding a slender finger to her lips, in the universal signal for quiet.

They dutifully followed her into her living room, which featured large floor to ceiling windows and two large, fancy rounded couches. Rex had been inside Senator Amidala’s apartment before, but never this far into the more private parts of it, and he had truthfully expected it to be a bit cleaner for someone of her reputation for diligence. There were piles of datapads crowding the table in the middle of the room, and several blankets strewn haphazardly across the backs of the couches.

And one dark mass of General Skywalker in his dark brown Jedi robes, sprawled fast asleep on one of them. His booted feet were slung over the far arm of the couch and his gloved hand was thrown behind his head. He looked vaguely happy, which Rex generally wasn’t used to, since he tended to wear an unconscious scowl in the rare moments the troops observed him sleeping. His ungloved hand was resting lightly on top of—something—or actually two somethings—that were laying on his chest.

Rex leaned a little closer to see what they were and then realized that he had been completely right about not knowing all of the relevant details. There were two very small sleeping infants curled up on General Skywalker’s broad chest. Rex wasn’t sure he’d ever seen a human being so little, and he struggled to wrap his head around the impossible tininess of the fingernails on one of the baby’s visible hands, which was fisted in a bit of Skywalker’s tunic. Their small bodies bobbed up and down with General Skywalker’s even breaths.

The scene was so strange and unexpected that Rex couldn’t look away to see rather than just hear Ahsoka’s exaggerated gasp next to him.

Senator Amidala reached down and fondly carded her hand through her husband’s hair, which looked just as disheveled as hers was.

“Ani,” she murmured, “we have some visitors.”

General Skywalker’s eyelashes fluttered, and the corner of his mouth stretched into a lazy smirk as he came half awake.

“Mmm,” he groaned lowly, “I _just_ got them to sleep, though,”

“It’s been at least an hour,” the Senator corrected him, tracing a fond, well-manicured finger over his eyebrow, the one that was bisected by the scar, “and I think you’ll really be happy with these visitors.”

That got General Skywalker to open his eyes all the way and take in the four faces that were staring down at him. His mouth stretched into a full-toothed grin when his eyes found Ahsoka’s, which Rex was sure were comically wide without even having to look. Rex just blinked at him when they made eye contact, not really sure what he should be doing with his face in response to any of this. He just kept moving his gaze between the two really truly unfathomably small human beings, and General Skywalker’s amused face.

“Hey,” Skywalker greeted. Then his eyes slid over to General Kenobi’s and he asked, “did you not prepare them at all?”

“No,” Rex heard Kenobi respond, with a smile clearly coloring his voice.

“Padmé, I think we broke Ahsoka and Rex,” General Skywalker joked.

“As soon as this gets leaked to the holonet, I think we’re going to break the whole galaxy, Love,” she teased back.

“It’s really been a whole hour?” Skywalker asked.

“Yes, and thank you by the way,” Senator Amidala said, “you allowed me to get a whole three paragraphs of a speech written.”

“See what I’m dealing with, Snips?” Skywalker drawled, “I have to do everything in this family.”

“Don’t listen to him, Ahsoka,” Senator Amidala responded, “I seem to recall doing fifty percent of the work _at the very least,”_

Ahsoka didn’t seem to be following the exchange, and Rex wasn’t sure he was either, but at least Skywalker and Amidala were enjoying it.

“We’ll call it fifty percent, even,” the General said.

“Ah, ah, ah, need I remind you: almost _nine months_?” Amidala retorted, leaning over the back of the couch, reaching out to wrap her hands around one of the babies. General Skywalker swatted her away with his free hand before she could, though.

“No, no, you just said it from your own mouth, you hogged Luke and Leia completely to yourself for nearly nine months. Now I should get to hold them all the time just to make up for it,” he argued.

“I was just going to let Ahsoka and Rex hold them, but I guess if you don’t want to introduce some of your best friends to your children, it’s your loss.”

Skywalker paused for a split second and his smile grew, if that was even possible at this point.

“You drive a hard bargain, but alright.”

Skywalker looked up at her as she drew one of the children into her arms, and the love in his eyes was too sickeningly sweet for Rex to keep looking at—like staring directly into a sun—so Rex finally dragged his attention over to see how Ahsoka was handling all of this.

Her eyes were even wider than Rex had expected them to be, but there was the faintest hint of a smile playing at her lips.

“C’mere, Snips,” Rex heard General Skywalker say from the couch and Ahsoka jumped a little from being drawn out of her racing thoughts before edging around the end of the couch. She sat next to where Skywalker had levered himself upright, a careful hand pressing the child he still held against his chest.

“Rex?” Senator Amidala said from next to him, unexpectedly. He swung his head around to look at her.

“This is Luke Skywalker,” she informed him, tilting the baby in her arms so Rex could see his little face, sleeping and peaceful. “Would you like to hold him?”

“Uh—Ma’am, I—” Rex stammered.

“I am one of the galaxy’s foremost experts on how amazing it feels to hold this little boy,” the Senator said sweetly, smiling at him, “You’ve done so much for the Republic, truly, and I very much doubt any of the members of this family would be alive right now if it weren’t for you. You deserve something nice for yourself, after everything, don’t you think?”

Rex held out his hands, finding it very hard to say no to such flattery, hoping that the hard plastoid armor he was wearing wouldn’t bother the baby. The senator maneuvered him carefully into his arms, settling the infant’s little head into the crook of Rex’s right elbow. Luke’s little body weighed practically nothing, and he squirmed sleepily, scrunching his tiny delicate nose in a truly fascinating way, burrowing himself closer to Rex’s body. Senator Amidala had been right about this feeling good, Rex realized.

“What if I drop her, though?” Ahsoka was saying warily from the couch.

“I’ll make sure you don’t,” was Skywalker’s cocksure response. Senator Amidala’s hands still hovered close to the baby in Rex’s arms and he suddenly wondered if he should have been concerned about himself doing the same thing. He decided he would concentrate very hard on keeping Luke Skywalker safe for the moment.

“Hello there, little Leia,” Ahsoka cooed, though Rex didn’t witness her actually holding the baby since he was still watching Luke with all of his attention.

The room fell into a companionable silence for a few moments before Ahsoka remarked,

“They’re really, _really_ cute, Skyguy,”

“I’m glad you think so,” he replied easily, “I might have had to challenge you to a lightsaber duel if you had thought anything else,”

No one said anything.

“Uh—” the General interrupted himself, and Rex was faintly aware of General Kenobi shifting his posture judgmentally, “I can still challenge you to a duel if you want—I mean if you missed sparring together as much I did—”

Another pause occurred as General Skywalker seemed to finally read the room.

“In fact, I’m starting to think that you maybe came here for another reason entirely—maybe we should—”

“This is fine,” Ahsoka reassured him airily, “though I’m definitely starting to see why Master Yoda said I should talk it over with you before asking to become your Padawan again.”

Rex was glad he was finally able to drag his eyes away from Luke to observe the comical fish-out-of-water look of surprise on General Skywalker’s face.

“Really?” he managed, his voice cracking a little at the end. Ahsoka shifted closer to him on the couch so she could lean her montrals on his shoulder, and Rex didn’t miss the way General Skywalker’s hand twitched to support Ahsoka’s grip on his daughter when she did, and then moved to wrap around Ahsoka’s shoulders.

“If you accept, General,” Rex piped up, deciding it was time for him to get in on all the teasing, “you should promise you won’t just use her for babysitting help all the time.” Skywalker turned to blink at Rex for a moment.

“Maybe I’ll just ask you to do it instead,” he reposted eventually.

I was Rex’s turn to be stunned, though he found he wasn’t that offended at the prospect. In fact—

“I mean, your day job is basically just babysitting hundreds of grown men, so I bet you’d be good at it,” Skywalker jested, meaning the 501st and the slightly crazed sibling dynamic the entirety of Torrent Company had going on.

Taking mercy on him, and probably because she had observed whatever startled look had come over Rex’s face just now, Senator Amidala admonished, “Anakin Skywalker, you are _not_ going to ambush Rex with an order to look after our children if he doesn’t want to.”

General Skywalker looked sufficiently sheepish. “That’s not what I—"

“I’d be open to it,” Rex surprised himself by announcing to the room at large. General Skywalker shot him a vindicated, satisfied smile.

Sure, he’d worried over the course of countless sleepless nights wondering what his life would look like after the war was over, but Rex had never even considered something like this.

Funny how that worked. Life had a way of surprising you, sometimes. In a good way.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should note that actually co-sleeping with your babies this way can be dangerous (despite it being a very cute image and many people doing it)! Let's just assume that the GFFA's technology and/or usage of the Force have solved the problem of SIDS and that Anakin is actually not being an irresponsible parent here.
> 
> THIS IS THE HAPPY AU WHERE NOTHING IS WRONG AT ALL, OKAY?
> 
> I hope you all enjoyed the emotional rollercoaster this fic took you on! I suspect the concept of uncle Rex will live in my head forever, so more AUs might get posted on this account at some point, but as parts of different stories.

**Author's Note:**

> I literally wrote this with an injured brain, so I hope it is not unbearable to read. I'm not technically supposed to be doing my school work right now and that did not sit well with me, so I decided to write fanfiction instead of academic essays...
> 
> Try not to get concussions, kids.
> 
> I've had these AUs knocking around my brain for a while, so I hope you all find them as intriguing as I do! The angst will get worse before it gets better, but I promise it does get better!


End file.
